


while those borders crumble

by alwayssomethingelse



Category: Shetland (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon lesbians, F/F, Grief, Maudlin angst, Memory, nothing more than that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 06:13:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18068084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alwayssomethingelse/pseuds/alwayssomethingelse
Summary: 'Have you ever held something until your hands were aching? And then let it go and watched it fall, and then listened to it breaking...' - Faultlines, by Karine Polwart, where the title comes from.





	while those borders crumble

**Author's Note:**

> Set during 5:2, exploring Rhona's reaction to the news of Carla Hayes' murder. Contains mild spoilers for 5:3, but none for the crime of the season. Pure maudlin angst.

When she looks back, Rhona doesn’t remember much of that day. Flash images, that’s all. Chatter in the kitchen about bodies found at the Hayes’; Billy says it’s thought to be Carla and Prentice, but she won’t let herself believe it till she hears the words from Jimmy’s mouth, confirming. 

Carla, murdered. Prentice too, though she’d never had much time for him. But he was Carla’s, and that stood for something in her book.

 _Bloody hell._

The nausea wells up within her, rank in her throat, her nose; the familiar colours of the corridor blur; Jimmy’s voice a white noise as she tries to quell her instinctive reaction. It has been a matter of pride for Rhona that she’s never been sick at a crime scene, an autopsy, anything like that. No matter what the cause of death, the state of the body. She isn’t going to start now, at the bare news of a murder. Even Carla’s… She zones back in, wiping a half-tear from her eye, as Jimmy says the Lennox woman is in custody. The thought of the potential killer here within these same four walls as she is standing in almost takes the breath from her lungs. But no. It’s never that simple, is it. 

_Never was with Carla_ , she thinks with a wry half-smile of remembrance.

From then on, Rhona pushes through the muddy hours of the day, sticking and cloying at her as all she wants to do is escape, let herself unbind. She sits at her desk; restricts her visits to the incident board, waits for Jimmy’s updates – too few and all too much. She knows she should tell him, though afterwards, she can’t remember how the thoughts played across her mind. How to explain…whatever it was they had been. It wasn’t as if either of them had been able to define it at the time – that had been the problem. No boundaries. No structure. 

It is near enough ten before she gets home, lets herself in with a sigh, and a groan as she leans back on the door to close it. Lifts a hand to her head, pulls it down over her mouth to stifle the cry that desperately wants to escape. Even here, in the safety of her own space, she can’t let it out, not yet. Slowly, she slides to the floor, head in hands.

_When was the last time she’d even seen Carla?_

For such a small community, it was remarkable how two people could avoid each other successfully for what feels now like a lifetime. Carla’s lifetime. 

_Two years ago, at Senga Bain’s funeral_ , her treacherous mind reminds her. _You avoided her._

 _I didn’t want to make the day worse for her_ , she corrects herself, rationality forcing its head. _Didn’t want to remind her_. 

She pushes herself up off the floor, locks the door – a new habit, but sadly necessary – and kicks off her shoes at the door to the kitchen. 

First stop, the spirit cupboard. Rhona gazes at the selection a moment before picking out the Talisker. Something windswept with a heady kick – just like being with Carla had been. She pours herself a generous dash, lifts the tumbler and raises it as if to a friend. A lover. Shakes her head, sighs, then downs the scotch in one gulp before pouring a second. Licks her lips. If she closes her eyes and concentrates, she almost thinks she can taste Carla’s mouth against hers. 

‘If there’s another world…’ The words choke her. They’re not meant from someone whose life has been stolen, as opposed to given willingly. ‘Oh Carla. What did Prentice do to cause this…’ 

The whiskey burns against her throat as she sips it. She’d never liked Prentice. Even as a boy he was a toerag. And there seemed nothing Carla could do to stop him. 

_You didn’t exactly help matters, did you?_ She shakes away the accusatory voice. The wee nyaff lad was hardly going to take any interception from her when he couldn’t be bound by his own ma. 

_God Carla, I’m sorry. I’m sorry_. 

Rhona puts the glass down and makes her way to the stairs, a notion in her mind. She hunts around in the bottom of the spare-room wardrobe for a while until she finds what she wants – some old photo albums, their cover design dating them clearly to the early 2000s. She sits back on her heels to open the first one up. Summer 2004, her first on Shetland. She hadn’t bought this house then, was renting Senga’s cottage, spitting distance from the family croft. Carla used to visit of an evening, and they’d sit outside drinking – gin for her, vodka for Carla. She’d had a basic point and click camera, had spent so much of that summer trying to capture the dark light of these strange – to her, then – islands. And Carla. Trying to capture Carla, without realising her own heart had been stolen. 

A midsummer bonfire, the boys allowed to stay up till midnight just this once, she can almost hear the music, lick the salt on her lips from the sea. And the other salt, softer, warmer, sweeter, that she tasted later. 

With a groan Rhona realises her ankles aren’t what they once were, and she stiffly rises, clasping the albums to her chest. Slowly makes her way back downstairs to the kitchen table, and the whiskey bottle. Knocks the heating on as she passes the dial, and divests herself of her suit jacket. She knows she really should eat something, but the very thought turns her stomach almost as much as it churned this morning. Instead, she sits and flicks slowly through these tangible memories, supplanting them with her own more ephemeral, and yet more visceral ones. 

The strange thing is, she thinks, Carla hasn’t crossed her mind in ages, a year at least, until this case. But now it all feels like it was just yesterday. 

And finally, Rhona lets herself cry.


End file.
